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“It’s just, you have to understand, we appreciate so much that you cleared out the undead-”
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“The hag had been threatening our children, and we are of course so very grateful to have our children back-”
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“It’s not that I don’t appreciate you saving my daughter, and I will only speak well of you later-”
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“It’s just, sir, there’s the Lord’s officials coming in soon-”
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“It’s not of course you we are worried about! You seem fine, but, the company you keep-”
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“I know we said you could stay a week, but, the clerics you see, if they see that we have a devil in the town-”
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“I understand,” Wyll replied, inclining his head. “I’ll take my leave.”
And they were grateful when he did.
—
So. Wyll got smarter about it.
Staying too long, clearly, was an invitation for Mizora to show up. Wyll never knew when she was looking out through his eye, only that it was often enough for her to know more than he wanted about him. He was, of course, forbidden from removing it.
Even if he wasn’t forbidden, the damned thing had barbs in it. It was hooked in there for good. The barbs ached during cold mornings and colder nights, but at least Wyll could summon fire.
Mizora also had a tendency to vent cruelties later on Wyll if ‘she had to show up’, but seeing people’s expressions turn from gratitude to fear was worse than any of Mizora’s words.
Other times she would appear when he would barter for supplies, but Wyll could work around that too. He just had to tactically plan in hunting some of the more humanoid monsters that existed out there and raid their food larders after.
That said, if he was quick getting in and out, Mizora didn’t always have time to show and ruin things, and deception was easy when it wasn’t entirely lies.
“Ah, I can’t stay long,” Wyll started to say. “There’s a ghast that set up a couple towns north of here. But I’d be happy to accept any provisions you could spare for the journey. A good home-cooked meal is reward enough, don’t you think?”
The problem was the more supplies a monster had, the more likely they were to be targeted by other monster hunters. Things that didn’t have grand hoards were the ones passed on by, and those Wyll felt were the most pressing.
He’d saved the child from the goblins, but the child had saved him, snapped him out of his self-pity and made him realize that he could fight other monsters with Mizora’s hellfire, not just the ones she sent him after. He was already damned, but he was going to save as many people as he could before he went.
Wyll tried to go after those that wouldn’t be picked up by others, but, sometimes the food ran out, and his pack had been incinerated by one very angry demon, and Mizora had then given him no quarter and sent him after a devil immediately after he completed his previous mission.
He knew he couldn’t save anyone if he starved. It’d be the dumbest way to become a lemure.
It was just so obvious what Mizora was doing, what she wanted to harden Wyll into. To make him see this as a mere exercise in cost efficiency and how to best rake in gold and treasure, instead of saving lives. But also, rationing was difficult sometimes. When you tried to help those who were less than fortunate, they were less than fortunate, and honestly they needed the coin more than Wyll did.
—
There was technically the time limit for a mission, and then there was what Mizora thought the time limit should be. If Mizora sent him after someone, she wanted it done that day, regardless of how long traveling took, regardless of weather, regardless if he was still recovering from injury.
About half the time, she would say the cruelest things she could think of, demean him and act like he was a particularly stupid dog.
But not always.
The leash tightened again, robbing him of air again, and Wyll couldn’t do anything because harming her was, of course, against the contract. His limbs wanted to flail, but they were locked into place by words he hadn’t realized at the time what they would mean.
His lungs burned, and the world spun, and she still denied him breath, up until he thought his heart would burst.
She relaxed her grip, and he gasped for breath, trembling against the ground.
“Pet, did you not read your own contract?” Mizora asked, standing over him. “Failure to comply with obligations means being cast into the Hells as a lemure. It’s an afterlife, you stupid mutt. Dying’s not going to get you out of it. You’re only alive right now because it’s more convenient for a pet of mine to be on this plane. Best not forget it. Now, you delayed for three hours today, and I still haven’t heard a good reason why.”
—
There never was a good reason why for her.
—
One of the few things he protected was a map, carefully marked wherever he had been oh so politely not invited back out of fear of his ‘devil mistress’. He’d gotten a system down to avoid Mizora as much as possible, but every now and then, he had to update his map, mark off yet another small piece of the world he couldn’t return to.
None of them ever hurt as much as Baldur’s Gate. He tried to think of that as a victory, that he was getting accustomed to this lifestyle, but it felt like ash in his mouth. He wanted home, but more than that?
Yes he smelled like sex, but he’d been bleeding from his face, openly. An entire eye gone. He’d trusted in his father to see where Wyll’s words would be bound. That something was wrong. That Wyll hadn’t wanted any of it.
But he and his father had been drifting apart for some time, and Wyll hadn’t realized how little his father knew him until that moment.
—
“We can pay you,” the man offered. He was wearing clothes so carefully stitched together, repaired over and over and over again. The lord had taken everything from these people and squeezed them dry for crumbs. “It doesn’t matter it weren’t a good harvest this year because we can keep it now, so, I’m sure we can find something?”
“No need,” Wyll said, ignoring the pit of hunger in his stomach.
Maybe if he agreed to work ‘overtime’, Mizora could grant him some magic to deal with the hunger. She’d already removed his need for sleep, something he hadn’t actually asked for, and it had been honestly distressing to find out the hard way.
Not rest, though. Rest he still required, but sleep was taken from him, on a pure whim.
But it was fine. It was more than fine. He rarely got ambushed at night anymore. Anything she threw at him, he would just have to turn around and make into a victory.
—
“Oh pet I could,” Mizora said, tracing a very unwanted claw across his cheek. He stayed perfectly still. He had the marks from last time he flinched. “But you made such a fuss when I tried to change your… needs. I thought you made it very clear I was to keep my alterations to myself. Is that still the case? Or have you changed your mind?”
Wyll stared at her, smelling the trap. She was making it obvious on purpose. She didn’t always. It was, he thought dimly, rather nice for her.
“You’re the pact-bearer,” Mizora said, all teeth.
“I’ll deal with it another way,” Wyll said.
Her claws dug in, just barely breaking skin. “I thought so. Well, I need you at your best. New target, pup. Lich in the making who has been taking its souls from the Hells. Poor choice. I’d recommend finding it before it ascends to lichhood, but that’s just me.”
She patted him condescendingly on the head before vanishing back into the ground.
Maybe the lich would have something fancy he could trade for food money. Liches usually had magic items, right?
—
The lich didn’t have magic items because she was a magic item. Of course she wouldn’t. She was a target had Mizora picked out.
—
“We have, well, I have a book?” the lady offered. It was a passing thing. Refugees on the road, attacked by a bridge troll. Wyll happened to be in the area.
Wyll’s clothes was starting to resemble more those of the people he saved. He almost opened his mouth to ask for sewing lessons, but hesitated.
Mizora’s phantom claws dug in along his back, and he genuinely didn’t know if that was her or just him.
He didn’t want to risk it either way.
“I’ve read it a hundred times by now. I’ve got it practically memorized,” the lady continued. “I can get a new copy later.”
Wyll thought of sleepless nights and waiting for the fatigue to leave his limbs. He smiled. “I’d love a book actually.”
—
Sometimes it only seemed like a ghoul did it. There would be a savage display of a dead body in the town. Limbs strewn across the yard, or organs exposed, or head ripped in half at the jaw. Ribbons of intestine in the trees, heart pinned to the door of a church or tavern.
People panicked. They assumed undead, because what else other than some vicious monster would do something like that?
Sometimes it was a ghoul.
Sometimes it was a rejected lover, or a cruel mother, or any normal kind of monster hoping to pass off what they did as something more undead to avoid suspicion. It started happening enough that Wyll bit his tongue, agreed to an unnecessary and painful mission into the Abyss to hunt a specific demon for Mizora, and came back with the power to speak to dead people.
It was much faster simply asking someone who killed them, but that wasn’t always a guarantee. A strong starting point for sure, but sometimes the victim didn’t see it coming, or in one memorable scenario, the murderer had disguised themself with magic just in case.
The problem was when it was a lordling. Some noble’s son who as long as he kept his murders to the ‘undesirables’ of society, his father wouldn’t do anything. And if the father was the source of law and authority in an area, there simply wasn’t any way for people to do anything within the system.
Sometimes the lord in question would try to pay Wyll off from not saying anything.
“Such a shame the ghoul also killed the lord and his son,” one of the farmers said.
“Really inconvenient,” another said. “Thank the gods you were here.”
“Won’t tell a soul, that’s for sure.”
It was nice getting to update his map with ‘happily allowed back’ for a change.
—
Being allowed back happily still remained a rarity. It’d gone to his damned head, and he’d forgotten.
“We appreciate it sir, we really do, but-”
“I know,” Wyll said, smiling. “It’s okay. I’ll leave before anyone knows anything.”
“We won’t say a bad word I swear.”
A lot of them said that. They couldn’t all have meant it. Mizora laughed even as her claws dug into his shoulder. Wyll had gotten so great at not flinching.
“Thank you,” Wyll said. Wouldn’t really be their fault if they did.
—
Most of the extra magic he requested through overtime was of a practical nature. Magic that allowed his weapons or eldritch blasts to hit harder, or magic that protected him from harm. It was only practical as Mizora would pit him against demons and devils far stronger than he, and if he didn’t do something, he would be a lemure in the Hells already.
As always, his final fate hung over his head. There was no way out of this that didn’t end up with him as a lemure, and he could only outrun it for so long.
It was hubris to think he would live long enough to old age. Most likely Mizora would set him against something he couldn’t hope to win, and that would be it.
Lemures were in a constant state of anguish. The agony, Mizora was fond of telling him, made them almost incapable of making decisions. They couldn’t think over the pain, you see.
But that wasn’t the angle that terrified him. Lemures didn’t retain their memories. They didn’t retain their personalities. It was all stripped in the process of making them.
Wyll could imagine himself as locked into a state of unending torment. It was much more unpleasant to think of the identity death of himself. Of everything that made him Wyll stripped away into a creature of pain and instinct, and nothing more.
He tried instead to think of Baldur’s Gate. He imagined them alive and well and healthy, the urchins in the streets, and the drunks at the tavern, and that one corner merchant who always seemed a little high but who made the best fresh sandwiches.
Even if his memories were taken from him, they’d still be alive.
So Wyll tried to not think about what happened when he died, and he bargained for more magic than he already had. He made the only practical, informed choice he could.
“I’m a friend,” Wyll told the dog, extending a hand.
The dog sniffed his hand politely, and then his ears perked up. “Oh. You are! That’s exciting! That’s so exciting. I have a stick! Would you like to see my stick?”
Wyll laughed. “Of course. Show me.”
—
Wyll was not immune to the irony here. Some self-made hero wandering around trying to help people, talking to woodland animals. In his defense, Mizora hadn’t left him many options. She scared away most mortals that lingered for more than a day, and so there wasn’t much left to talk to.
Sometimes the magic would prove useful in the strangest ways. Rarely did people think to hide their crimes from mere beasts, and granted, the raccoons really couldn’t tell faces apart, but the raccoons did know where the rot smell of where the dead bodies were. From there, Wyll could question the dead bodies on who or what killed them.
Raccoons were also easily bribed with small bits of food.
Usually though, the magic wasn’t practical. Usually, animals didn’t have secret treasures to reveal, or some boon they could offer. The most they could do was talk to him, and yet that was more valuable than any treasure they could lead him to.
If Mizora would keep him from people, then he would talk to birds, to rabbits, sometimes deer though they were prone to paranoia as Wyll found out. Dogs were so excited to find out you spoke ‘dog’, and cats were far more affectionate and needy than their demeanors gave off.
They didn’t scare away as easily as people did when Mizora came showing up, and while they never stayed, companionship was its own reward. The frontiers were teeming with life after all.
Mizora hadn’t meant to give him such a boon for so small a task, but by pact, she also couldn’t take it away for having completed it. The magic was his to keep.
—
“If I knew you were so needy you could have told me pet,” Mizora said. “I guess I’ll have to keep you company more often.”
It didn’t matter. She was trying to ruin this for him. She tried to ruin everything he touched, but she couldn’t be there all the time. She had other duties to attend to, some from her archdevil mistress, some from the other warlocks in her revenue.
She’d get bored eventually and return to her normal level of surveillance, and he’d still have the birds to talk to.
“All that running around, and, hm, it doesn’t look like anyone stuck. Fancy that, pet. They’re fine to take advantage of you and just as fine to throw you to the wolves. All that heroism, and you are even more unwanted than before.”
“That’s not why I do this,” Wyll said.
Mizora laughed. “Lying now. Aw, pet, you are going to make such a fine devil one day.”
Her claws traced his chest. He fantasized about pulling away. He pretended, very very hard, that he was in Baldur’s Gate, and there had never been any dragon cult that had threatened his city. He imagined the brine smell at the docks, and fresh fried fish, and long nights dancing everyone under the table.
“Were you hoping one of them would pat you on the head and call you a good boy? Daddy never did, did he? All I had to do was hide the dead bodies, and he was so ready to believe the worst of you. That you willingly fucked a devil. Well. We shouldn’t make a liar out of your own father, should we?”
—
Mizora was in his head more often now, and it wasn’t waning. Her commentary was more common, more specific, to the point it seemed like she was always looking out of his eye.
Sometimes, she’d remain silent for a day, a tenday, and then her voice would come up again, referencing the most specific things that had happened. She would become a running commentary, a constant cruel voice in his mind.
Honestly he preferred when she just showed up and raped him instead. At least then he could be alone after.
—
“Just, I do want to make sure, we don’t owe you anything for this?”
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“I didn’t sign shit. I didn’t sign anything, so, if you were hoping for angling for my soul or something-”
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“But you are separate from her, right? She’s not going to enact payment or anything later?”
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“I should- maybe I should go. But, thank you? I’m not entirely sure why you did this, or your motivations, but I’m saved either way. I won’t say anything, I swear.”
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“Thanks, I guess. Not like the gods helped out. Not sure why I’m turning my nose up this, no matter your source. Help’s help. If it is help, at least.”
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“Again, I keep my soul, right? In my own body? Where I left it? I’m very concerned about the state of my soul staying just how it is. I won’t say shit about you, but my soul’s here for keeps.”
—
Wyll marked the time he could spend after having saved someone down to a couple of hours now. Half a day if he got lucky.
She couldn’t-
It wasn’t possible for her to constantly be waiting for the moment to ruin his life yet again, and yet she always showed up. Her hands were always on him. Her voice always in his ear. But never when it would be convenient.
He’d killed the minotaur with hellfire, but not before she’d sunk her axe deep into Wyll’s side. He didn’t have any fire left to cauterize the wound, and the bleeding wasn’t slowing. If he made a fire, maybe he’d have something to keep himself from bleeding out as the bandages weren’t helping as much as they should, but his head was spinning, and his hands were fumbling the flint and steel.
And maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad. He wasn’t much more than a lemure right now anyway. He already was in a constant state of torment. There wasn’t much more that could be done. And maybe he didn’t want to do Mizora any more favors.
Maybe he’d been wrong to fear ego death. If he couldn’t remember a before, the now might not hurt as badly.
The blood continued to seep from his side, and his hands were feeling colder.
And then he thought of a little boy, screaming for the gods to save him, and no gods had. He thought of the boy half-hiding under his mother’s own corpse, sobbing, as goblins jabbed him with spears. Shallow cuts and thrusts, to give him a slow death.
The gods weren’t going to save a single soul if it didn’t directly benefit them.
He tried again, and again, and the third time the sparks took. He clutched his side as he coaxed the flames on with what fragments of magic flickered in his soul, and then he heated his steel blade and pressed it to his side.
—
It took a few days to recover. He’d lost, apparently, a lot of blood. He might have delayed too long and could very well die anyway. A mild infection crept in, leaving him feverish and shaking. He couldn’t sleep through the worst of it, couldn’t sleep at all. Instead he lied there, world spinning around him, waiting for it to be over.
Wyll wondered vaguely if the math worked out, if the people he saved was worth becoming a lemure.
It had to be. It was his soul anyway, so he could decide its worth. So he would make his soul worth that, in his mind. He saved people. However many he could save before dying, that was what his soul was worth. And if it wasn’t worth that, he would repeat it to himself over and over again until it became true by sheer rote force.
In the end, the fever broke before he ran out of supplies. He was able to get back to the town and receive medical attention from a cleric. He quickly stocked up on supplies, and then he left before Mizora could ruin that too.
—
“Are you sure you can’t stay longer?”
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“You killed the banshee for us. If you wanted to stay a night, that’d be fine.”
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“Really, it’s not any trouble if you wanted at least a room for the night.”
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“We’d feel bad if we didn’t throw you at least a small celebration? Let us do something.”
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“This town has been begging for an excuse to throw a party in a decade sir. Please.”
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“It’s nice to find out you live up to your reputation. Thank you so much. Surely there can be something we can do for you in return.”
—
The excuses were as practiced as the gentle voice he used. His voice kept measured through all things, and if he never showed where something hurt, then Mizora’s claws scrambled instead of finding purchase.
In time, Wyll learned to endure the loneliness as much as he learned to endure the pain from a blade or spell. It took longer, but it too could be endured.
The Blade of the Frontiers was something he could put on when he needed. A hero who needed nothing and could withstand all pain. He was charming enough to ease nerves, but not too charming that people wanted him around for too long after. Wyll was simply a shadow and nothing more.
His life had become a rhythm. He hunted fiends for Mizora, and he saved those who he could. Supplies were still a struggle, but not as much as they used to be. Mizora’s magic only went so far, so careful planning and tactics aided where she refused.
Somehow, despite his rocky start, a decent reputation proceeded him.
They hadn’t lied when they said they wouldn’t tell. They couldn’t protect him from Mizora, or give him many supplies, but they hadn’t spoken ill of him. They helped in the only way they could.
From time to time, he would be sent to the Hells, or more rarely the Pits, hunting down a target for Mizora. This too became a rote thing.
What was not a rote thing was being kidnapped by mindflayers.
The ship had crashed, and he had escaped, but not without a passenger. Wyll could somehow feel it squirming in his skull. It had, somehow, messed with his magic, reducing him to the faintest scrapes of power.
And yet.
Mindflayers were soulless beings. The soul was consumed during the process of becoming one.
Becoming a mindflayer would be bad, of course. Wyll had no desire to hurt or enslave anyone, much less eat brains. Should he transform, he had no guarantee that he’d be killed before he caused tragedy. But.
But.
If he did become one, his soul would be used up in the process, and the soul was the anchor for the pact. No soul, no future in the Hells, where his soul would still be used to cause tragedy for others.
Either way, he ended up as a monster destined to cause torment.
As a mindflayer though, here, he’d likely be killed quickly, and then it’d be over. No eternity of pain in the Hells. No continuing to live under Mizora’s leash.
Wyll thought for a moment on the beach, surrounded by the wreckage of the ship, and the spread of dead bodies. He had no idea if it was possible to remove it. He’d search around to see if it was possible, but if he only had seven days left?
Wyll would do as he always had done, and he would spend his time saving as many people before he went. And maybe then, he would finally get some rest.
—
The most suspicious looking drow Wyll had ever seen was staring at him.
“Okay so you are infected too,” he said. His eyes were a bright silver color. Not one of Lolth’s drows then, if Wyll remembered correctly. “Right. So me and these assholes are gonna try to figure out how to get the worms out of our brains.”
The drow jerked his thumb to the people behind him. It was a motley crew including someone who was clearly a vampire trying to look innocent.
Wyll thought about this for a moment.
“Do you have a lead?” he asked. He'd gotten rather attached to the idea of Mizora not getting his soul in the day he got to think it.
“Basic medicine,” one of the people said behind him. Was that a githyanki? “My people have a cure for this. These druids have already tried to kill you instead. We have the creche location. Let’s move already.”
Wyll could find a reason to not travel with the group. There was, after all, a vampire, right there. He'd make a fantastic excuse. He also had a mission Mizora did technically set him on.
But the child he'd saved continued to sit next to his soul. There were always more people to save. So Wyll mentioned the devil he was hunting, and the drow agreed to help him on this.
"We can go find this devil after we visit the creche," the githyanki said.
The drow shrugged. "We got seven whole days, right? We got time to a hunt a devil and help out these tieflings."
The githyanki said something that was definitely a swear word in her language, and the vampire continued to try to look as innocent as possible while, again, being absolutely terrible at hiding his vampiric nature.
Well. At least if he was still going to be stuck with Mizora, it'd seemed he'd be with interesting company, if only for this moment.